In efforts to increase efficiencies, commercial and industrial process control may have become increasingly automated. A wide variety of sensors, actuators and other process monitoring and/or control devices may monitor and adjust the commercial and/or industrial process through one or more processors of the process system. For example, the sensors may monitor operating parameters for the process, or may evaluate process flow and may provide feedback data regarding the monitored parameters or process status. The feedback data may be provided to one or more of the processors, which may then store and use the data to generate system control signals that one or more actuators may use to adjust the process. To communicate with the process control devices, the processors may typically operate by an operating system, such as Windows NT, Solaris, OSE, or other known operating system, which enables the processor to communicate with the process control devices.
Commercially available software may also be employed to interface the process control devices with the operating system of the processors of the process control system. Such software may not directly integrate with some of the processor operating systems and thus may have to be customized for operation with the processor operating system by an experienced programmer. As an example, customization of process control device software designed to operate in a Windows NT environment, which can employ a machine architecture that orders bytes of data values in memory from least to most significant, may be required such that the process control device may communicate with the process control system that may be operating in a Solaris or OSE environment, where the bytes of data values can be ordered from most to least significant. Additionally, system upgrades, maintenance and/or process control device changes may require reprogramming. Thus, the added costs associated with providing compatible processors and process control devices may substantially increase installation, operation, maintenance and upgrade costs for the automated process control system.
Data values may be sent between the processors and the applications and/or between the processors themselves. Thus, it may be necessary to ensure that data structures are compatible among the processors and/or process control devices. A mechanism to provide flexibility for applications to build and interpret data structures, such that the data values that may be contained within the data structures may be exchanged between processors and/or process control devices may reduce the costs for providing compatibility between processors and/or process control devices.